What is IMAP?... its actually pretty darned handy

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol.  Its generally used by mobile phones for accessing your email.  Its the system that keeps the inbox on your mobile sync'd with your email servers inbox.  Its all very clever and very handy but it doesn't end there...

If like me you use a number of different computers then you'll find this useful for syncing up all your emails.  Its simple to set up with Outlook, just go to "tools" - "email accounts" - "add a new email account" then enter the details provided by your email provider.  If you use Googles service, enter "imap.gmail.com" in the IMAP box and "smtp.gmail.com" in the SMTP box.  Then enter your username and password as usual.  Click on "more settings", "outgoing server" and select "my outgoing server (smtp) requires authentication".  Then click on the "advanced" tab and enter 993 in the "incoming server (IMAP)" box and 25 in the "outgoing server (SMTP)" box.

Then click "okay/finish".  Job done!  You'll notice the folders column on your Outlook screen start changing as the new IMAP account takes effect.  Within a few minutes you should have a mirror image of whats on your Gmail account in Outlook!

This is great if like me, you enjoy the light and easy to use interface of web based email but still feel more secure and at home with trusty programs like Outlook.  Plus, it means you can re-utilise the "right click - send to" function in Windows again which was lost whilst using Gmail on my other computers.

WVC54GCA power supply problems

My weather cam had been plagued with connectivity problems, at random intervals the camera would apparently just switch itself off.  After lots of messing around... I decided to replace the power supply, you'll notice that the WVG54GCA, like a vast majority of IT tech, runs on 5v which is an annoying voltage to get power supplies for. You can pick up a power supply for 4.5 or 6v for about £5 however, 5v will set you back £20.. so a trip to Maplins later I had the L06BR which has been doing a sterling job for over 48 hours now.  Judging by forums the power supply to the WVC54GCA is notoriously poor.  If you're picking one of these up on ebay, the chances are they either couldn't operate it.. or the power supply is knackered.

Watch Freeview channels on your PC!

For anyone that likes the idea of watching Tv on their PC/laptop this website could be the answer for you!  All freeview channels are available, BBC/ITV/Channel 4/5 etc etc!  Perfect if you can get a wireless signal but no decent reception or the thought of mile upon mile of coax cable winding its way around your house is a little depressing.

http://www.tvcatchup.com

Weather Cam Update!

Right... after a number of teething problems with the weather cam, mainly the fact the software kept freezing and not updating the image, I have decided to try a different piece of software to stream my webcam to the internet.  I found another free piece of software called Web Cam XP which so far has done a much more reliable job of streaming pictures to the internet.  Its been running for approx 10 hours now without failure whereas I found Yawcam would stop streaming after about 2 hours, which is a shame because its a really good little program.

I've kept Yawcam for uploading pictures at intervals to my ftp server and for keeping pictures as a record of the weather on my PC.  WebCamXP's support of individual images wasn't as comprehensive or easy to operate as Yawcams.

Weather Cam Update

I started to tweak the resolution/bit rate settings of the video to try and give a better picture.  Although setting MPEG4 and MJPEG resolutions to their highest setting did increase picture quality marginally, it also resulted in two days of faffing about.  The camera kept freezing and apparently dropping out of range. I thought this might be due to the distance between my wireless router and the IP cam, so set about utilising one of my old routers as a wireless access point (yes you can actually do that, I'll explain how another time) but not before moving the router about my office, totally rearranging furniture etc etc etc.. before recalling it all worked perfectly fine before I'd adjusted the resolution settings.  Return the resolution settings to "normal" from "very high" and hey presto.. the IP cam works fine.  2 days wasted.  I'm guessing the problem was down to bandwidth so if you suffer intermittent coverage and repeated failure of your wireless IP camera try your resolution settings before setting off on a pointless 2 day "changing rooms" adventure.

AVG 9 causing shut down problems in XP

You may have read in my previous post that I'd recently installed AVG 9 on some of my computers.  All's gone well except for my girlfriends HP Media Centre M7240.UK.  Shortly after installing AVG 9, XP started to struggle when shutting down, a number of applications would signal failures, namely WUAUCLT.exe, SVCHOST.exe, INETINFO.exe.  With nothing significant apparent on any troubleshooting websites and after numerous problem tracing attempts, removing unnecessary applications, running virus/spyware etc checks, registry cleaning etc.. nothing worked!  I've removed AVG 9 and installed Microsoft Security Essentials instead.  Since then the problem has gone away, the computer shuts down without any errors.  Have you had this problem?  Did you manage to solve the issue and keep AVG 9 installed?

Microsoft Security Essentials... fail.

Having worked with MSE for a couple of days, I have decided to return to AVG.  Although it massively improved Windows start up times it slowed down saving items within a browser.  Downloading anything from a website caused the whole system to stop for 10+ seconds.  Doesn't sound like much but soon became very annoying.  It effected Firefox, Explorer and Chrome in the same way, even switching off the automatic scanning of downloaded files (which isn't recommended) didn't effect the delay.  Having removed MSE and installed AVG, the browsers all react normally to save/download requests.

Shame, I really wanted this to work!